Entries in Brian Murphy
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Casual reporting of Bahrain's uprising tends to give the impression that the events of February 14 and the year-long aftermath sprang out of nowhere; that Bahrain's Shi'a had finally "had enough" and used the window afforded by the Arab Spring to make their displeasure known, to spectacular effect.

There is no need to devote much time to debunking this storyline, deliberate or not, as any serious study of Bahraini politics would point to a long history of political conflict, whether between Shi'a and state, Sunna and state, or Sunna and Shi'a.

What was surprising about the scenes of February and March, then, was not that such an opposition would mobilize, but that it was able to mobilize on such an unprecedented scale.

1950 GMT: Deviant Current Watch. Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, has told a seminary in Qom that clerics must oppose the "current" that wants to deviate elections from the concept set by the Supreme Leader.